Sockpuppets and Social Media Ethics
June 11th, 2009 by Simon HeseltineA couple of posts ago I wrote about a gentleman from the UK who had made some mistakes that had been captured and spread across the web. How did he get caught up in his situation? Two men were masquerading as a woman online, basically sitting behind a fake persona. Is this ethical? No it’s not. Yet people do it. On the internet you don’t have to be who you are in real life. You don’t have to be a spotty 16 year old with a weight issue, you can be an unquestioned expert on lepidoptery.
But what about companies? Is it fine for them to have employees not identify themselves as employees, or take it even further and pretend to be a member of a different demographic to subtly push the agenda of the company? Again, no it’s not. There’s even a term for it – “Sock Puppets”. What tends to happen is that Brad in marketing slips up when posting as “Brenda, a 58 year old grandmother from Arkansas”, and the community gets suspicious and outs ‘Brenda’.
It’s true that Brad could keep up his persona, indefinitely, and be a ‘secret agent’ for the company. Yet he could still be found out, especially if he’s posting from work (most forums log the IP address of posters, and it’s a simple process to do a reverse lookup to see who owns that IP).
Once the person is outed, any and all goodwill that they built up will be gone, with the company most likely facing a backlash from the community who won’t take kindly to this type of fraud.
This is why we recommend to all of our clients that they be honest and transparent in their social media engagements. If they have affiliations, let them be known up front, don’t let someone else find out about them and accuse you of dishonesty. If your company wants to engage in social media, you have to engage the right way, otherwise you’ll end up with more damage than if you’d never started.
Photo by Bschmove
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Some body must have upset you I do hope the issues are resolved shortly. I like what you say about honesty. In my opinion and I can only speak for myself, the action of honesty can never be compromised and this applies to all things in life. I have lived this way for many years now and even though my life is hard at times I feel free in my heart. It might sound that I follow the holy Joe brigade but that is far from the truth even though I have many friends who are. When you say transparency don’t you mean truth, we all know that there are people out there that can do this type of thing and there is a need for them to be named and shamed. And that’s across the board with all loud and dishonest people, I have noticed through life that this type of person always has plenty to say about nothing, so sad really. kind regards to all Dape.
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